Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction Series) (2 page)

"Ahem," Caleb said and cleared his throat.
"
My husband has left. Lucky for me, I think. Lucky for my... sons."
His voice wilted; he sat back on his heels. "
Everyone believes the baby is his. No one knew about my beloved Noah, God rest his soul."

Elle slammed her hands over her ears, her temples beginning to throb. English still came with some difficulty, her mind often confusing phrases.

Mon Dieu,
this was not difficult enough.

Caleb gripped the diary in both hands and brought it close to his face.
"I pray for a boy, one I can name after his father. I also pray Zachariah and Caleb's never returns."
He flung the diary to the floor and crossed the room, his brogans jarring the scarred planks. "All those times I wondered what I did to make him leave. You're the smart one, and Zach's the responsible one, which leaves me!"

Noah's jaw worked; his lips parted. He didn't move, just let Caleb take him by the forearms and shake him—something she had never seen Caleb do and mean it. "Mama loved you most," he said. "And now we know why, don't we?"

Noah gazed at a point high above his brother's shoulder, looking like he was struggling to piece together shards of shattered glass.

Elle shoved one hand between them, swiping tears from her face with the other. "Please, Caleb, stop.
Arrête.
"

"How many people have joked with us, Professor? Me and Zach look like two bulls let loose in a muddy field, while you, you're a prince, all scrubbed and sparkling perfect. If it wasn't for our eyes." Pressing his lips together, he gritted between clenched teeth, "You don't look like us. You don't act like us. Who
are
you?"

"I don't know," Noah whispered. "Not a Garrett, I suppose."

Later, Elle would wonder if Caleb had been begging Noah to admit the opposite, that brotherly love bound them as solidly as sinew and bone, that words in a diary did not have the power to tear a family apart.

Later, she would wonder about everything.

Instead, she just stared as Caleb snarled and cocked his fist, throwing it forward with more than enough force to knock a grown man off his feet. As Noah fell to the floor, Caleb charged past them like the bull he'd compared himself to.

Struggling to his knees, Noah ripped his spectacles off and flung them into the corner. Elle crouched beside him as he took a ragged breath, his shoulders quaking. She covered her mouth with her hand, wondering if she was going to be sick.

In the distance, dull whacks filtered through the open window. Angry blows, metal against wood, violent. Noah tilted his head, casting his face in darkness. "No, Cale," he said, and shoved to his feet. Elle grabbed his sleeve, but he shrugged free, crossing the room in a drunken stride.

Going after him, she tripped down the staircase, slapped the screen door wide, and dashed across the yard. Blades of dew-soaked grass clung to her ankles; streaks of moonlight struggled past the thicket of pine branches to light her way.

Noah halted in the doorway of the dilapidated shed he and Caleb spent so much time in. Elle stepped behind him and bounced up on her toes. Overturned spools of wire and shelves once holding nautical models lay in a twisted gnarl. A New England schooner and an American block sloop were crushed to bits. Caleb was nowhere to be seen.

Noah's hand gripped the frame as he lowered his brow to the rough wood.

"Caleb didn't mean it. You know how he is. Like me, I guess. Acts first, thinks later." She brushed her hand along his shoulder. His muscles tensed beneath her fingers as he turned his head, looking straight at her. Blood trailed down his face, dripping from his chin to his stiff collar. One eyelid looked mangled, like it had been sliced with a knife.

Her stomach pitched.
"Your eye."

He lifted his arm, sighed hoarsely, and glanced away.

"I'm sorry. Oh, Noah, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. You and Caleb can't help creating havoc. And, he's right. I'm always close behind, picking up the pieces. Except this time it's me you've destroyed."

"I never meant—"

His hand shot out, banging against the shed door. "I don't know
anything.
Don't you understand? The people I trusted the most are strangers to me. Zach knew about this; he was old enough to know. He could have told me after she died. He's ashamed, that's why he didn't tell me. And Caleb"—he swallowed—"to
hell
with Caleb."

She watched his lower lip quiver and nearly dropped to her knees as he said, "Come to think of it, to hell with
you."

Elle took a distancing step back. This angry young man did not resemble the compassionate one she loved with all her heart. "You don't mean it." The plea came out a strangled whisper. "You don't."

He slid to his knees, his head still resting on the frame. "Yes, I do. I've never meant anything more." He flicked his hand at her, a clear gesture of dismissal. "I'm tired of protecting him. Of protecting
you
."

In the distance, a seagull shrieked, and a wave crashed against the shore. She would remember those sounds, remember the feeling of being awake during a nightmare, for the rest of her life.

As if he heard nothing and knew even less, Noah didn't move a muscle. When she reached out to touch him, he flinched and withdrew until his body was squeezed against the side of the shed.

Zachariah.
The thought of Noah's eldest brother calmed her: he would know what to do.

As she entered the alley leading to the docks, a glimmer of awareness made her look over her shoulder. Noah's head lifted, a shaft of moonlight throwing his face into luminous profile, beautiful despite the blood and the bruising. His vacant expression sent a shiver down her spine.

She left him then, never imagining he would be gone when she returned.

Or that he would stay away for ten years.

Chapter 1

"The first plan is the simplest

and the one most usually adopted."

C. Wyville Thomson

The Depths of the Sea

1898, Chicago

Noah marked four notches in the top of the ship's keel and pushed up his shirtsleeves, rechecking his measurements. He was adding the figures in his head faster than he could with paper and pencil when a knock sounded on the door.

"Coming," he muttered beneath his breath, but didn't rise. He disliked finishing a model section and leaving his materials spread over his desk.

"Garrett, I know you're in there." The door rattled on its tracks, yanked from the outside.

Noah groaned and stretched, crossed the room and let Bryant Bigelow, the ruddy-checked fisheries commissioner, charge inside.

"Dammit, Garrett. Freezing in that hallway." Bigelow blew into his hands and stamped his feet. His sodden pilot coat fluttered at his ankles, nearly brushing the floor. The former Navy captain, all bluster and brashness, stood just over five feet tall. "Christ Almighty. Freezing in here, too."

"Is it?" Noah grabbed a sweater from a rusty hook and tugged it past his head. He smoothed the scratchy wool, let his palm linger over his twitching stomach muscles. He pressed hard, sucking in a furtive breath.
Maintain a calm facade,
he ordered himself.

"Why in God's name do you live here? Never felt a colder place in my life." Bigelow advanced into the center of the enormous chamber, loosening a crimson scarf from his throat. "All this junk. Shells and"—he jabbed his boot against a rusted anchor—"ship models. And books. How many you have here, Garrett? A hundred? A thousand?" He angled his head, fixing his flinty gaze on Noah. His fleshy lips twisted in what he probably considered a smile. "You're the finest biologist I've ever worked with, but sometimes I think you're crazy."

The jarring squeal of the Union Loop Elevated kept Noah from having to reply. At first, he'd hated the metallic, ceaseless screeching on the tracks below. Now, he found sleep difficult without the train rattling the glass panes. Of course, he could live in Jackson Park with the other biologists or on Prairie Avenue with the educated elite. Admittedly, the space was impossible to heat during a typical Chicago winter. However, he could not,
would not
, explain his choice to distance himself from his colleagues.

Accounting for his idiosyncrasies made him decidedly uneasy.

"We have a problem, Garrett."

The blurred edges of Bigelow's face finally registered. Noah reached for his spectacles. "I would offer tea or coffee, as you look like a drowned rat but"—he slipped them on, blinked—"no facilities."

"You can't even boil a cup of water in this joint?"

"Afraid not." He shoved his hands deep in his trouser pockets, stiffening his shoulders, hoping the stance looked properly composed. He wasn't going to ask. Did not want to know.

Unfortunately, the rumors had made their way to his cramped office yesterday afternoon. He had been hiding in here ever since.

"I received another telegraph regarding the lab in North Carolina. Seems they prefer to work with a local. Soothe ruffled feathers of the fishermen or some such guff. You're from North Carolina, right?"

Circling toward the window, Noah squeezed his eyes shut. The sheer irony of life never ceased to amaze him.

Bigelow's leather soles cracked as he crossed the room, paused to fiddle with a row of horse conchs resting on a low shelf. "Anyway, we're ready to build. Need someone to supervise construction. You're the closest we have to a local, and you're the only man I have on staff who worked on the lab at Woods Hole. Our funding agreement contains conditions. Unfortunately, you've become one of them."

Noah watched a streetcar turn onto Dearborn Street, blue sparks spitting in its wake. "Last week, I received word a stipend has been approved for the trout acclimatization west of the Mississippi. I wanted to start working—"

"Give it to Thomas or someone on your crew. How many trout can one man save? Do you remember the disaster at Woods Hole? Didn't we learn our lesson?"

Noah heard a match strike, then Bigelow sucking on one of those foul cigars he loved. "You've been pushing for a second lab, Garrett. Well, here she is. A month or two living a stone's throw from some of the best barrier islands in the world doesn't sound terrible to me. Look at it this way, you can get research done, and you won't have to sleep or eat. Same as here, only warmer. Pilot Isle is perfect for you. No telephones. Hell, no electricity." He grunted, blew a noisy breath into the air. "I have to admit, this dawdling makes me question your commitment, son."

Noah shivered as ten years of grief and uncertainty, of raw, gut-wrenching fear, descended on his shoulders.
Commitment.
He would do anything to make the laboratory a success, was, in fact, the most devoted member of the fisheries department.

And Bryant Bigelow knew it.

"When do I leave?" he asked without turning, not wishing to record the victorious light in the commissioner's gaze or reveal the dread in his own.

"Soon as you're ready, Garrett. Soon, better be. Already leveling the foundation." He ground his heel to the floor, his smoking cigar stub no doubt beneath it.

Noah dipped his head, gripped the sill with both hands. A gust of wind off the lake rattled the windowpane in its frame, sent a frigid draft of air across his cheek.

After all the years of running, the past had finally caught him.

* * *

Noah had once believed nothing less than a decree from God would make him return to Pilot Isle.

Long ago, he'd convinced himself of his ability to live without his family, without Elle. Yet here he sat, bouncing across white-capped swells in a sturdy skiff clearly bearing the markings of his brother's design.

"You staying for the heated term, yup?"

Noah glanced over his shoulder. The old man sat at the stern of the boat, tiller in one hand, bottle of spirits in the other. He remembered the face, brown and withered, the pale scar splitting one cheek. He remembered the name, too—Stymie Hawkins. "You're pinching," he said without thinking, then frowned and turned toward the bow, wishing he had kept his damn mouth shut.

"Pinching?" The skiff rocked with Stymie's abrupt movement. A dry cough, then a slurp that sounded like a swig from the bottle. "I reckon I can get us to the Isle, young fella."

Noah squinted and swabbed at his eyes. The spray of salty water had made it necessary to pocket his spectacles, but he could see well enough. Too well, perhaps. They were three hundred yards from docking, sailing past a ship anchored close to the wharf.

"Ready about." Stymie swung the boat into the wind. "Little storm brewing, bit of rain. No nor'easter... nothing like that. Hope you have a place to stay. Lodgings, what little we got, all crammed tight with gosh darned whalers."

"I made the necessary arrangements," Noah said, watching a row of peaked cypress roofs burst into view, upper porches rising above wind-shaped oaks. He grasped the sides of the skiff, the reality of returning stabbing deep, the urge to flee hitting hard.